At 72.0, the Present Situation Index decreased 0.8% between October and November, but is up 25.4% from a year earlier. The Present Situation Index is currently up 256% from its December 2009 low point. The Expectations Index had been losing more ground lately. It was down 4.0% from October and down 14.3% from a year ago.

As of last week, the 30-year mortgage rate sat at 4.46%, up over a full point the November 2012 low of 3.31%. Current interest rates are roughly on par with where they were in June 2011 and, and still nearly two points below the 6.41% average rate during the height of the housing bubble through 2006.

Click below for the interactive Consumer Confidence chart (only works in Google Chrome).

You can use the sliders under the interactive chart below to zoom in on the data for a specific period.

About The Tim

Tim Ellis is the founder of Seattle Bubble. His background in engineering and computer / internet technology, a fondness of data-based analysis of problems, and an addiction to spreadsheets all influence his perspective on the Seattle-area real estate market.

The gov shutdown must have impacted confidence. It did impact mine. It made people realize how a few nut cases can bring the largest gov to its knees. Jesus freaks who were raised on the idea of Armageddon.

RE:ron @ 2 –
The government shutdown had zero effect on me. If it wasnt for the news, I never would have known it happened. Why did it effect you so much? I think it is just you that got so shook up over the spat. Get over I ron, it wasnt that big of deal. We all new it would end.

RE:Erik @ 3 – It is somewhat surprising that there was any reaction, other than by employees laid off. Politicians have become like Chicken Little with their claims of disaster if government spending is interrupted or cut in any way. Unless you happen to need a passport or some such thing, a government shut down has little impact on most people, unless the government wants it to impact people (e.g. shutting down a park by stationing rangers around it, rather than just continuing to send people in occasionally to pick up trash).

RE:Kary L. Krismer @ 4 – Wow, you and Erik are incredibly naive. You realize that the government shutdown also stopped work at private companies that contract with the federal government?

Years ago I worked as a billable subcontractor at a private company doing federal government work. If your POC on the government side went on furlough, work stopped and billing stopped. The ripple effect of this across thousands of F500 to small businesses is significant and likely caused a number of smaller firms to lose money. Passports and parks? short sighted.

RE:Erik @ 3 –
Eric –
Here’s a few simple examples – there’s an endless list of on the web. The financial crisis had a huge impact on my spending and saving habits…a positive impact, actually, since I offloaded a lot of consumer debt that I never should have accumulated in the first place and I learned to take less risk in the form of rental morgage debt. The recent gov shutdown was a reminder for me to be diligent and spend less/save more. As a landlord, I am increasing reserves and making less capital improvements for a year or so until those idiots stop fu$$ing with my gov. Is my confidence higher because a small group of fools proved to the world that they can slow the economy? No. I would be irresponsible if I didn’t react by being more conservative with my personal finances. Yes, I have less confidence.

both charts are clearly down and the trend should continue this spring. The consumer confidence chart should fall a long ways from where it is as the drunken government stops the QE. Of course this is just temporary as everything should fall into massive deflation with no QE. Which of course will lead to the massive mega collapse. I believe they will not restart QE and in fact strengthen the dollar while letting all other investments crash to unbelievable lows.

You can again buy stocks at about 4000 on the dow 1000 on the nasdaq

we would have been better off had they let everything collapse and never have started the QE program

RE:doug @ 10 –
I would like to believe you, but you have cried wolf too many times. You are one of the permabears. So is Matthew. Matthew got embarrassed after getting schooled by corndogs and he’s scared to show is sorry avatar on this site. The fundamentals support stock prices. The fundamentals do not support housing prices. I think at some point housing prices will stay flat or go down slightly.

If you have strong data showing otherwise, please show me the evidence. Otherwise this is just another comment from another fraidy cat.

RE:Kary L. Krismer @ 4 – Wow, you and Erik are incredibly naive. You realize that the government shutdown also stopped work at private companies that contract with the federal government?

Yes, I was aware there was some of that, but I had not heard it was that extensive. However extensive it was, it was probably reported at 10X as great an effect as what there really was.

Did the federal employees ever get paid, like occurred during the last shutdown? If they did, the impact of their temporary unemployment would be nil.

Big consulting firms whose regional offices crowd around the beltway- Booze Allen, Hewitt, Accenture – and hundreds you’ve never heard of – they’re the ones providing services to both essential and non-essential government departments. Offices full of 6 figure consultants sitting on their thumbs – and getting paid to do so. They can spend a few days catching up on administrative tasks, but ultimately they’re not paid to sit around and organize their inbox.

What makes this interesting is most of the companies in this business tend to lean to the conservative side – IE big government republicans that have a vested interest in keeping federal spending up. It’s an odd and unsettling dynamic when the GOP is working against the short term interests of their own donors like that. I suspect it’s one of the reasons the “news” stations tended to focus so much on low paid public facing positions like park rangers and postal clerks – it kept people like you and Erik confused about what was really going on with the hundreds of thousands of behind the scenes employees that operate much like their corporate counterparts.

That IT director that was on furlough? He might have got his back pay but he also put off buying new software and equipment from Microsoft, Cisco, Oracle and IBM…

I could show you all my data and resources but it would be impossible for you to understand the complexity of the financial markets at this time. It takes many years of trading and knowledge of economic history to get to my level. There can only be so many in the 1 percent the rest are the 99 percent.

I only offer my opinions to seatttle bubble readers as I do believe there are some that do in fact know whats coming and it aint pretty.

RE:Kary L. Krismer @ 8 – Yes Kary, we did get paid (and no, I don’t agree with that decision for those of us who didn’t go to work).

You should see the entire building of people we have in “planning and requirements” that are all making $120K-150K per year lording over other people who actually do real work. Their latest contribution? Now, you can actually be penalized for getting a project done too soon (it makes all of their non-value-added project tracking metrics look bad). I cannot make this stuff up.

But government will never eliminate this waste since much of it is at middle-level positions that have seniority, so I’m not sure what the answer is. They don’t refill open positions for lower-level value-added worker bees first. And this actually does affect the public in a detrimental way. Private-industry, usually out of economic necessity, periodically flushes out this detrius layer.

RE:doug @ 13 –
Please give me a date or a range of when you think the market will crash. I think we all know there will be another downturn down the road. Please give us an indication when you think this will happen. I would tell you, but like you said, I cannot understand your complex data. I’m not on you level…

I could show you all my data and resources but it would be impossible for you to understand the complexity of the financial markets at this time. It takes many years of trading and knowledge of economic history to get to my level. There can only be so many in the 1 percent the rest are the 99 percent.

You say QE will be stopped, and this will plummet the economy into a depression. You go on to say, QE will not be restarted as we plummet.

In brief, can you explain the reason the government/Fed will continue to tighten as we plummet?

I’m not saying I agree or disagree with you. I’m just saying, unless you back your claims with some substance, it’s difficult to give them merit.

What makes this interesting is most of the companies in this business tend to lean to the conservative side – IE big government republicans that have a vested interest in keeping federal spending up. It’s an odd and unsettling dynamic when the GOP is working against the short term interests of their own donors like that. I suspect it’s one of the reasons the “news” stations tended to focus so much on low paid public facing positions like park rangers and postal clerks – it kept people like you and Erik confused about what was really going on with the hundreds of thousands of behind the scenes employees that operate much like their corporate counterparts.

That IT director that was on furlough? He might have got his back pay but he also put off buying new software and equipment from Microsoft, Cisco, Oracle and IBM…

As to the first paragraph, I’m not sure why you blame the Republicans for what happened. There was plenty of blame to go around, and it was the other side refusing to negotiate.

As to the second paragraph, that would indicate zero impact on the economy, other than timing.

I’ve said this before, I’ll say it again. If the economy is healthy, we should return to approx 5-6% interest rate on savings accounts. What does this do to interest rates on loans, including home loans?

Can the current economy stand 7% on home loans? If not, is the economy actually healthy? What does this say about house prices?